my black rock heroes

jimi hendrix
sly stone
george clinton
little richard (the original king of rock)
vernon reid

I didn't realise this either; it turns out that all the photos I'd seen have been altered somewhat - you know how the press will often soften up people's colour so they look slightly more neutral? Yeah, probably a racial agenda there, looking at her website she's not a white girl with unnaturally curly hair, she's a black girl with braces (cute). But you wouldn't be able to tell from a lot of the photos.

Anyway, I have nothing to add to this debate, just thought I'd throw that in to the mix, as it were.

this post is for the "ass blaster" who seems to be taking a page from khchris.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe was briefly cited as an important influence on blues in Martin Scorcese's documentary series.

wfmu has a video
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/0..._rosetta_.html

also youtube has several
http://www.youtube.com/results?search=sister_rosetta&search_type=search_v ideos

Billie Holiday & Sarah Vaughan are two big names as jazz vocalists.

As much as I love Patti Smith & Chan Marshall in particular (of the names mentioned so far),
Kim Gordon is of course the alpha female rock star.

HAIL!

my top 10 black performers (rock or otherwise):

Jimi Hendrix is undoubtably number one since he is far & away the greatest guitarist of all time. Sure, he learned how to play the whole guitar (& the amp) from Buddy Guy, but Buddy Guy simply isn't great enough to make the top 10. He wrote great songs & sang them distinctively as only he could. Neil Young once remarked that "there's nobody even in same building as that guy."
John Coltrane is my number two because he defied convention & made an extraordinary leap into deeply personal art that was dismissed at first but that history has proven to be largely universal. As much as I love his progenitor, Charlie "Bird" Parker, he doesn't make the top ten.
Robert Johnson is number three because he's the King of the Delta Blues & shaped country, folk, & blues. He is also perhaps the most deeply soulful performer of all time. Son House & Big Bill Broonzy were the only two guys previously recorded really performing blues at a high artistic level before Mr. Johnson. Son House popularized the notion that Johnson "sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads" after Robert had disappeared for a couple of years & came back to play circles around everyone. He's the original shooting star, unless you count Mozart, that is.
Chuck Berry should be second in command perhaps since he had an incalculable influence on rock n' roll & the Brits; he makes the list at number four.
Bud Powell was described as "the eighth wonder of the world" by Miles Davis because of the things he can do on piano that no one else before or since can really completely match. Miles, who changed the course of jazz history three times, unfortunately doesn't even make my top ten.
Art Tatum also shares a similar distinction. His music is beyond amazing & cannot be imitated.
Herbie Hancock is my favorite jazz piano player. His work with Miles Davis' band & his first few solo records are magic. He went on to be a fusion performer & to try to make some money at the expense of his art, (first with The Headhunters & most recent with Christina Aguliera) however, which is the reason he is listed after Bud & Art. A prodigy through & through, he was playing Mozart with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at age eleven. He went on to briefly study under the great Lennie Tristano, the true creator of cool & free jazz. I know, "What about Thelonius Monk & McCoy Tyner?" There's only 10 slots, folks. He also invented, or at least popularized, the dj record scratch with his crossover album Future Shock. (after Alvin Toffler's popular book).
Al Green is my number eight because I love all his music & he has one of the finest voices in all of recorded music. "Love & Happiness" is my favorite Al Green song. Marvin Gaye & Stevie Wonder have some exceptional material as well.
Muddy Waters was a field hand discovered in Mississippi when Library of Congress documentarians went searching for Robert Johnson who was already dead by poisoning. He started electric blues in Chicago & was also highly influential on the Brits along with Ray Charles, Little Richard & Howlin' Wolf in particular.
& the final spot on the top 10 list goes to
Charles Mingus who proved himself to be one of jazz' most experimental innovators & always led a great band thoughout his career.

nvmd

*Applause*

I've never heard of Bud Powell though.

Arthur Lee is a great black rock artist too his band (Love) did some great music.Him and hendrix even did some jam session together. It's sad that he has leukemia right now and can't pay his medical bills.

Other Great Black artists not mentioned: Bad Brains
Living Colour

Rob Instigator already did mention Vernon Reid (from Living Colour).
Some may consider him technically gifted, but I am of the opinion that Vernon Reid simply sucks. I suppose he needed another name to fill out a rock top five. At least he's listed last. ...a great top four though...

Yeah, Bad Brains are cool. Man, did they freak people out.

Prince Rogers Nelson didn't make my top 10, but he deserves an honorable mention too.

Also Sonny Sharrock...

oh & i edited & reshuffled

CHUCK BERRY IS ROCK N ROLL

aretha franklin sang gospel and soul

little richard IS ROCK N ROLL> he will tell you himself. he ROCKED. he had girls panties wet with his gyrating and piano playin'. he was ROCKIN.

I read several books on the history of popular music in america. I have read about how so much comes from the Blues, which is dead on right. However, I also read that after the original wave of rock n roll (early to mid 50's), once the anglo masses got into it, the african-american population sought something else, leaving a gaping hole. Where once the pioneers of this music we call rock were largely african-american, the mainstays of it became younger white males.
african american culture sprang up new things. it combined church music with rhythm & Blues and created soul. It combined soul and rock and psychedelics and created funk. It combined all musics and beats and boasts and created hip hop.
it seems to me that innovation in this country, at least in popular music, is led by the minorities seekingt to create something new for themselves, which, as we all know, then gets assimilated by the popular mass culture. (co-opted may be too strong a word)

I once heard a comedian talking about this. I think it was eddie griffin. he was talking about why is it that when black kids do something outrageous in culture or music, white kids have to come around and take it over the top. his example was , hip hop ganstas rap about pimpin and drugs and the streets and gang-banging, scaring people, and thn white kids come around with music about "I love satan!, death to all!, kill em all!, satan!, god is dead!, hate hate hate!, anger! rage!"

which is totally true. it makes me laugh.

rock n roll is, or was originally about, fucking. rock n roll means to fuck. Muddy waters sang it in ROCK ME - "rock me baby rock me all night long. rock me baby, like my back ain't got no bone." That is the driving force in rock music.

even today, half of the music is hedonistic about fucking and sex and eating pussy and good stuff like that, and half is rage and anger and sadness and bitterness about NOT fucking and sex and eating pussy.

Joan Jett rocked, and still rocks. she loves eating pussy and she knows that to ROCK properly, it is not about affecting a pose, or pretending yougot a cock, but you have to feel that propulsive, shall I say "masculine" force. the better female rockers (PJ Harvey, Tori Amos(yes you can rock with a piano), Kim Gordon, Kim Deal, Exene, Courtney Love (if you like her,which I do not), etc.) all have this in them, whether it is a stage persona or their actual selves.

rock on everyone.

Joan Jett effectively covered The Shondells' massively great "Crimson & Clover" too.

Back in the day, I saw her open for REO Speedwagon once & was able to get up on the front row for her band. It was cool as shit to see such a tiny woman rock that hard. After her set, some goons started pushing & shoving as they jockeyed for positon for REO, so we had to back it up.

& if anyone doesn't own a Chuck Berry compilation (Golden Decade I & II, 20 Golden Greats or The Great Twenty-Eight) you should go out & buy one of those today.

The Great 28 is a must for anyone even slightly interested in the origins and history of rock
without chuck berry's guitar there would be no beatles. lennon said so himself.

roll over beethoven, tell tchaikovski the news.

i never said that these women were the "most important in rock music". you asked for someone to name you some and i did. we're not talking validity or subgenres or any of that shit, i just named some names. sheila e and that gal from lenny kravitz's band may not be your particular brand of rock (they're not mine either), but they still play rock music.

i never called you a racist. that was monsieur assblaster.

don't forget that he was the first person to smash an instrument on stage. he is the original rock star.

chuck berry is at the top of my list of rockers.

early in the mornin' i'm givin' you my warning. don't you step on my blue suede shoes. hey diddle diddle ima play my fiddle i ain't got nothing to lose.
-best lyric ever.

ain't it a shame is such a great song.

Robert Johnson was another great blues man. lots of great songs. check him out...

robert johnson?!?!?! who the fuck is he?

you gotta be fucking kidding:mad:...

Sarcasm

total sarcasm.

val-holla-ing
actually, that is what the thread started out as. the thread started out as who do you consider to be the most important women in rock. assblaster thought our answers were a little too "vanilla." i used your list of artists to choose from to illustrate my point that the actual pool for important women of african descent in ROCK history was not all that large. in order for someone to be IMPORTANT in rock, there must be no question that they are rock. if there's a doubt, the importance goes down. and hey, i do have "the glamorous life" by sheila e sandwiched on my ipod somewhere between shannon's "let the music play" and "morning train" by sheena easton (that's not even a joke.) i just don't consider it rock, though she does rock. and lenny kravitz himself is by all means rock, which would mean someone in his band is - but if you go out and ask 100 people on the street who cindy blackmon is by name alone, i'd be surprised if even five people knew, hence the importance argument more over the rock argument.

somehow this thread started out as a thread about primarily white women and now is a thread about black men. where is assblaster now to complain how racist we are for not giving the black men a thread of their own? (maybe at home memorizing the extras on his Crash dvd???)

since now it appears we've gone beyond rock, i will throw out my favorite african-american female recording artists (to get back to the female part) and i will say lauren hill and erykah badu. if we go to jazz, nina simone rules all, followed closely by cassandra wilson. i list them as my favorite and not most important in any genre's history, with exception of nina simone. nina simone has true importance due to her part in the civil rights movement.

no one mentioned wendy o. williams. or did they?

anyway... W.O.W

i'm not a "lady" & they aren't "rock", but

I'm a huge fan of Laurie Anderson







& to a lesser extent, Kate Bush

Running Up That Hill single

love the cover

a happy Laurie in '05










Laurie & Lou





























one wonders how the fuck Bette Midler got in this picture...backstage at Carnegie Hall after a Jimmy Scott with Antony & the Johnsons concert.

this pic says it all:









































an Annie Liebovitz photo from 1995

katrina benefit '06














































she's with the king (since like '92) so I suppose that makes her the queen, right? oh well, most of you people will never get it. She's too truly avant-garde & too ahead of her time. She made it into John Peel's record box, for lord's sake. Even Lou didn't. She was on the scene with Glenn & Rhys before anything even went down. She was Andy Kaufman's "straight-man" audience plant too. She speaks many languages & performs most foriegn concerts in the vernacular. She was the first artist to release an interactive CD-ROM with Puppet Motel. She was the first (& last) artist-in-residence for NASA. She can make art in any media. She invented the modern multimedia stage show & many instruments. She doesn't tour with a lot of equipment anymore, however, & mainly just relies on her storytelling mastery. She was the featured musical act at the state-of-the-art World Expo last year in Aichi, Japan.

when asked about Laurie's music by Charlie Rose in 2003 (after some 9 years together, mind you), Lou praised her to the skies & said "she's the best...THE BEST" & kept going on & on....Charlie was interviewing Lou for NYC Man & the whole time he could not stop talking about Laurie. (& Andy Warhol too) You could tell she was a little embarrased.

She didn't contibute a hell of a lot to music before she commited suicide a few years back, but she was intimidating as shit and had THE most unique female voice of all time...

She contributed nothing to music, unless you count the moronic stage stunt of blowing up cars; I certainly do not. W.O.W. sucked. She would have gone nowhere without the tits, hence her regalia.

you want her, don't you?

nope, not in the slightest. suicidal frauleins with faces like a pit bull with birth defects fail to turn me on at all.

you wrote yourself that "she didn't contribute a hell of a lot to music"...what a fucking jerk.

excuse me for being twice as factual as you were.

you contributed one fact: that she committed suicide.
i contributed two: she was the first to beat on, smash up & sometimes even blow up junker cars on stage.
she would have gone nowhere without the ta-tas & that's why she exhibited them all the time.

i think at most of her concerts she usually went completely topless to sell tickets; lookee there, another fact. I did nothing to cut down your post.

you have a sexy mind, but a poor attitude.

maybe you should focus that mind on being open, rather than taking every opportunity to create an unnecessary argument...
i know you weren't cutting down my post. Quite frankly, I wouldn't care either way

I like Aretha Franklin, she is amazing. I love the "Say A Little Prayer For You" Lp. The titlecut is one of the most perfect songs ever. plus, the record includes a very sexy version of Satisfaction.

hat off to Mr atari there

i'm sexy all over, kid


"every opportunity"?

nope, I can engage in debate just fine WITHOUT ARGUMENT with people that aren't peabrains

witness the girls vs. satan thread

go fuck yrself

suit yourself, atari. it was a compliment...

we didnt get off on the correct foot on the old board atari but it is always good to have your opinions here

you speak the truth but you do it an educated manner, but your truths are not necessarily mine, but it is great you still post although not as much as you used to

Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed Gossip:
They came to see a Shakespere production in the theatre were i work and Lou Reed was appalingly rude to the people who were attending the vip room.Laurie Anderson was typically friendly.She also composed the music for one of the plays we had on a while ago.Atari did you ever hear anything about this?

just for the record, i respect his posts. I usually agree with all his comments, really! I don't want to look like the bad guy, here. He's very smart...

All the ladies in the house say "yeah."
Come on you motherfuckers say a prayer
when you fight, you gots to fight fair
you motherfucker, yeah
you motherfucker
you know what time it is!